Oil and NASA's mission statement change

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Agriculture? Small Is Beautiful proponents claim that a 12 foot by 12 foot hydroponic greenhouse will provide all the fresh fruits and vegitables that a family of four can consume on a year round basis, with a substantial surplus.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

This is absolutely false. These kinds of assertions are constantly being made by people whose real interest is to sell ideals (in the form of books and workshops) to the niave'. I currently farm, and have engaged in bio-intensive style gardening for many years, and can tell you a family of four would need at least an acre to generate enough calories to survive, even on the best of agricultural land with the best climate for agricultural. They would also need to learn how to live on a lot less protein and a lot more fiber, and would have to import tons (literally) of compost or fertilizer each year to replenish the soil.

More food for thought:
www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html

Emanuel

[LB, quoting the Small is Beautiful crowd] ' ... a 12' by 12' hydroponic greenhouse ... "

[emanuel] "... false ... a family of four would need at least an acre to generate enough calories to survive, even on the best of agricultural land with the best climate ... "

Sounds kind of small to me, too. But I've experimented with hydroponics and it is a lot more productive than dirt farming, expecially if you go first class.

Do you have an apples-to-apples comparison?

Besides, few of us will want to get all of our calories from the poison carbohydrate, now that we understand what the antidote insulin does to our bodies over decades of exposure.

The amount of space needed to grow stuff is not as important as the energy needed to grow. Using sunlight which farms do requires a lot more space than using artificial light. So you both are right. Now about CO2 in the atmosphere-if its a problem why not remove some of it? Rather than argue about where it comes from of what will become of the environment if exhausting CO2 continues wouldn't it be a lot easier to develop a system to remove CO2 from the atmosphere? A very simple way to remove CO2 is to grow more plants and store biomass. A few cubic kilometers of biomass per year could be stored by growing seaweed. That would also reduce the solar energy a little as well as clean poluted oceans.

BTW, If some changes were made in how we live 50 billion people could live very well and much better than most do now. Just about everything being produced for comsumers is junk no one needs and houses are very inefficient dwellings. No one should have to drive 50 miles to a job. Just little changes would make everyone better off.

Jim we have a system for removing CO2, it is called forestry and ocean management. My assertion earlier that CO2 will cause health problems is mostly due to the formation of H2CO3 (Carbonic acid) which interferes with zooplankton (the producers of O2 in the air). BTW, the largest vent of CO2 is in China where a huge coal field is burning underground. The fire started ~3000 years ago probably by lightning. No industrial revolution there.
I still maintain that what the Environmental lobby is suggesting is not the cessation of the greenhouse effect, but the prevention of an inevitable and non-human caused ice age that is perfectly natural.

I do maintain that the world is overpopulated. The factor not listed in this debate should not be, "Can we physically increase the carrying capacity of Earth?" We probably can with technology. Instead how about the quality of life on earth. I have travelled through a lot of the US and Australia, most of the western parts of both countries would not be favorably inhabited by any human for any length of time. But I ramble...



Mark Vitrone

Jim and Gregg were alluding to two important things 01 Aug 2006 relevant to this topic: Spin, and H20 as the most important greenhouse gas

While I am proud of the fact that in a forum 20 years ago, I was the only one to nominate Global Warming as our biggest Environmental problem, I agree with Jim, that the Global Warming issue is a bit of a beat up. "Global Warming" has been increasingly used by politically astute scientists and science administrators as one of the easiest ways to get funding and so on. Emphasis on CO2 instead of H2O clouds and vapour (which is a much more powerful and controllable greenhouse effect-or) may be a symptom of this:

I'd say it's unlikely to be a random coincidence that while CO2 is produced by sunset industries which are growing only in the poorer countries, Global Warming high altitude H2O cirrus clouds are produced by sunrise industries which are most important to the richer countries: air travel, aircraft design and production. I propose that we see a similarly politicised Science in the acknowledged and potential health effects of microwave and other radiations from other industries important to the richer countries: telephony, radio, defense, electronics, nuclear energy and so on.

MV: Glaciologists are very worried about increased iceberg calving from the Antarctic ice cap, the biggest source of fresh water in the world, especially the possibility of very big, very catastrophic movements.